Jerome Increase Case was born December 11, 1819, in Williamstown in Oswego County, New York.

[3] His father sold some primitive "ground hog" machines (imported from England) that helped speed up the separation of grain after it was harvested.

[4] He first manufactured the machines in a small shop in Racine, and then built a three-story brick factory in 1847 on the Root River.

[2] The labor shortage combined with increased demand for food (with no imports from the south) resulted in a growing business in the 1860s.

In 1876 he started another company to make plows, licensing the "center draft" technology from Ebenezer G. Whiting.

[3][4] He was a founder of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters, and president of the Racine County Agricultural Society.

[6] In his early days, he traveled throughout Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, and Wisconsin to sell, deliver, service, and collect his machines, which is how he likely became familiar with the area.

As he turned over the business to other partners, he spent more time on breeding race horses on his Hickory Grove Farm.

[6] However, Jay-Eye-See was retrained by Edwin D. Blither to race with a new gait, and three years later set a pacing record of 2:06.25 in 1892 at Independence, Iowa.

Currier and Ives did a series of prints[12] and the horse's image was used to advertise products by the Case company for years.

[16] Case also owned some Great Lakes ships, a winter home in California, a ranch in Texas, and a stock farm in Kentucky.

Amanda Case was born October 1, 1862, and married Jonathan James Crooks of San Francisco.

[19] Jackson Irving Case was born October 23, 1865, married Henrietta May Roy on May 25, 1886, and had four sons.

The company sponsored a team of racing cars, led by driver Lewis Strang until he died in 1911.

[22] A popular, easy to read biography of Case in the context of his company and his times is Stewart H. Holbrook, Machines of Plenty, Pioneering in American Agriculture (New York: Macmillan, 1955).

A planned marble monument to Jay Eye See was never erected, and the horse's grave site neglected for almost a century.

After a developer planned to build a parking lot over the suspected grave, local historians located and removed the bones in July 1997.